The Hardest Part of the World Cup Is the First Game

Cristiano Ronaldo and Raul Meireles practice at the Portugal national team's pre-World Cup training facility in Florham Park, New Jersey., BY CHRIS GEORGE

By now you’ve likely heard enough about the 2014 World Cup, which begins on Thursday, to know that the Americans have a German coach who cut the team’s only player with a name more recognizable than his own. Perhaps you're aware that Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo, the reigning FIFA world player of the year, had been diagnosed with something called patellar tendinosis, which under the circumstances might be defined as when a player wants a few days of rest before a big tournament, and that Brazil, the host nation, is the favorite to win, despite the country’s woeful preparation, civil unrest, and the fact that it lost when it last hosted the event in 1950, then also as the overwhelming favorite.

Those are just a few of the storylines found on the front line of World Cup news. There are three matches in the first round of games, but nearly every player and coach agrees that the first match is the most important.

“It’s the first game,” Portuguese winger Nani, who plays club soccer at Manchester United, said when asked to identify the Cup’s biggest challenge. “It gives you the motivation and the confidence to continue in the competition.”

“The first games are generally quite cagey affairs,” agreed Brad Friedel, 43, a goalkeeper for the club Tottenham in England’s Premier League, who played in two World Cups for the United States (and was a member of three teams) before retiring from international competition in 2005. “You get a lot of draws and a lot of one-goal games. Then depending on the results of the first game, that’s going to dictate how certain teams kick up if they need a result in the second game. And then the third game obviously is another intensity level.”

Many Americans will remember the drama of the last match of the group stage at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, when the U.S. team needed a win against Algeria to advance and got it in extra time on a last-gasp goal from Landon Donovan—and they’ll remember the celebratory hysteria that followed.

That excitement was simply to get to the round of 16, the beginning of the tournament’s knockout stages, when matches can no longer end in draws and are often decided by penalty kicks. Often, nothing goes as planned: the quarterfinals of 2010’s tournament brought its most controversial moment, when the buck-toothed Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez deliberately saved a goal with his hand in the final ticks of open-field play of a tie game. Ghanaian forward Asamoah Gyan could have made Ghana the first African country to reach a World Cup semi-final when he took the penalty kick that resulted from Suarez’s offense. But Gyan hit the crossbar, and after Uruguay won on penalties, he was in tears on the sideline.

That match is a perfect example of what soccer pundits call an “undeserved result.” It happens in soccer more often than in any other sport, and it’s a feature that adds to the sport’s unpredictability, drama, and fans’ claims that its unfairness mirrors life.
“Momentum-wise, you can be very much on the front foot and then you concede a goal on a penalty or a set piece,” Friedel told VF Daily last week by phone, from England. “Was it a deserved result if you played better for 60 minutes of a 90-minute game? Probably not.” He added that, when compared with other sports, “it’s much easier to miss goals and opportunities” in soccer.

The World Cup is the most-watched sporting event in the world. There is no bigger stage. The stories from it add to the sport’s legacy and history, but each player and national team comes to the tournament (and achieves global fame) with a unique narrative. To wit: Donovan, the player who scored the American goal that advanced the team to the round of 16 in 2010, is the same player U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann controversially cut three weeks ago. The Uruguayan Suarez’s reputation has grown even more since his infamous hand ball: this past year he was named the player of the year in England’s Premier League, where he plays for Liverpool. Gyan, the Ghanaian who missed the penalty kick, has fallen off international soccer radar after leaving his club team in England to play for Al Ain in the United Arab Emirates.

So what teams should you keep an eye on? Last week, Brazilian coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said that he hopes to face Argentina in the World Cup final. Such a match would pit two of the game’s most dynamic players against each other: Brazil’s Neymar and Argentina’s Lionel Messi, who happen to be teammates at Barcelona. The South American countries have a rivalry that dates back to when they first formed, 200 years ago. This year marks the 100th anniversary of their first competitive soccer match against each other. Any time the two play, Friedel said, “the intensity and the pressure of the game would be absolutely immense.” On this stage, it would be something else altogether.

And yet, there are 30 other teams that will do everything possible to try to make it to that final match, to try to make their story the one we remember. Chief among them: defending champion Spain, who has had so much trouble finding a suitable striker for its team that it nationalized the Brazilian-born Diego Costa last year; or Italy, who field two of the game’s best players and its biggest stronzi (or “shits,” in English), forwards Mario Balotelli and Antonio Cassano; or Colombia, which after qualifying for its first World Cup since 1998, lost its best player to injury (Radamel Falcao) and will have to rely on the gifted playmaking of its 22-year-old midfielder James Rodriguez and the tactical genius of its first foreign coach in 30 years, the white-haired Argentine Jose Pekerman.

No matter which teams end up in the final, one thing is for sure: come the next World Cup, in 2018, we’ll still be talking about how they got there.

David Gendelman is research editor at Vanity Fair. Follow him on Twitter at @gendelmand.